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This is a page from my small journal in which the prompt was to imagine that we were part animal or plant. So I turned my self into an autumn tree (yes it looks a bit creepy!), and this prompted me to write a poem about reaching the autumnal years (see end of post for the poem)

I could not fit the whole poem on this small page, so I just wrote a few phrases of it and decided that I would make another autumn tree page in my larger journal.

I cut this stencil from waxed stencil paper and used it with gesso. On the left page I used the leaves as a mask, painting gesso all around them. On the right page I used the stencil, painting gesso only inside the leaf shapes.

Then I painted a couple of autumnal colours over both pages, wiping it back as I went, the gessoed areas resisting the paint and ending up lighter. This is the classic gesso resist technique that I have used quite a lot.

I found a few autumn leaves online and printed them out to make a bit of a leafy border, then wrote my poem.

Here is the poem:

I am becoming an Autumn Tree

I am becoming an autumn tree
My leaves no longer greenly, perkily lifting
Toward the sun
My limbs sometimes creaky in the wind,
All my seeds have floated away and now bloom
In far off lands
My blossoms have lost the blush of youth
And I foresee the day when my leaves will fall, one by one
Into the silence of winter.

And yet, the sap still pulses in my veins,
the breeze still sings in my branches,
and my leaves, Ah my leaves are a blazing torch,
lighting up my corner of the forest.
I offer my gifts to those who come searching,
Vermilion and crimson, russet and gold,
The autumn illuminates me, I am aglow
with the wisdom of many seasons,
and my autumn song may yet become
the sweetest of them all.

In our art journaling class last week we had a go at blowing runny paint (mixed with some kind of flow medium as well as water) with a straw. I ended up with a background that reminded me of winter branches. I took the background home and stared at it for a while. Then I was looking through an old diary called “The lover’s diary” and I came across this couple in a painting called “The Garden of Eden” by Riviere. They are in a cold looking bleak background, yet her face is lit with love, they seem to be in their own little world. I imagined them on my winter tree background. Before dinner I had a sunset walk on the beach. The winter is almost here, the evening falls earlier every day, but the sunsets in May are spectacular. Nevertheless, I felt a bit depressed when I was driving home, as I often seem to do after sunset on a winter’s evening. I wonder if it’s a kind of seasonal affected melancholy, perhaps it is an ancient coding in my genes? My husband , who does not get depressed, finds it hard to understand these feelings. But he is always there for me, being solid and kind and supportive. So my gratitude to him drags me out of any feelings of depression, and by the time I was glueing down these images I was cheery again. Doing something creative (as opposed to watching television in the evenings) is a mood lifter as well!

Anyway, all of that is what this page turned out to be about. Many different feelings and ideas came together on the page. Art journaling is a wonderful thing.

Our prompt was to make a page in our art journals in which we were a plant of some kind. So I made this page in which I am becoming an autumn tree, and that inspired me to write this poem. I hardly ever write poems so it was significant for me. I am pleased with the poem. Here it is: